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This book is a career-capping anthology of essays that inspire, enlighten, and tickle the funny bone.
Richard Lederer is Learning and Language Dressed Up to Have Fun, and Lederer’s Language & Laughter is his funniest book ever.
Illuminating stories about the histories and mysteries of everyday words and phrases.
A treasure chest of amazing facts, curiosities, and quizzes about your favorite authors and their works.
Word Wizard Richard Lederer offers his insight into the most bedazzling, beguiling, and bewitching words in the English language.
A sublime adventure in recreational linguistics that brings order to our English language.
In this career-capping anthology the reader will find essays that enlighten, inspire, and tickle the funny bone.
In this wide-ranging collection, Richard Lederer offers his reflections on the English language, along with his tales of a life in letters.
The ultimate joy ride through English
Educational word games about the origins of words and common expressions
A joyous hymn of praise to the English language.
The Big Book of Word Play Crosswords is a rousing collection of 100 original puzzles put together by best-selling language author Richard Lederer and award-winning crossword constructor Gayle Dean.
After a half century of sparking readers to appreciate the glories of the English language and laugh at its oddities, beloved language maven Richard Lederer serves up a veritable banquet of words. This book is a career-capping anthology of essays that inspire, enlighten, and tickle the funny bone.
From his hymns of praise to English to his rib-tickling bloopers and puns, these verbal performances are among the brightest gems of a storied career — certain to delight language lovers and Lederer fans everywhere.
Brett Radlicki’s gallery of illustrations adds to the luminous joy and rollicking fun of A Feast of Words. This is the perfect book for family, friends, and yourself — everyone smitten by the magic of language.
Known as “Attila the Pun” and “The First Name in Popular Linguistics,” Richard Lederer is Learning and Language Dressed Up to Have Fun, and Lederer’s Language & Laughter is his funniest book ever. In its pages, he takes you on a joyride through our glorious, uproarious, notorious, victorious English language.
Chock full of jokes, wordplay, bloopers, puns, crazy English, funny names, grammar stammers, and hilarious holiday humor, this book will brighten your days and make you laugh again and again. A belly-shaking guffaw stimulates circulation, tones the muscles, energizes the lungs, excites endorphins, adds T cells to the immune system, reduces pain, inflammation, and muscle tension, and provides superb aerobic exercise. They who laugh, last.
-Hardcover Edition-
To the man or woman who knows its origin, each word presents a picture, no matter how ordinary it may appear. Best-selling language author Richard Lederer passionately and humorously presents illuminating stories about the histories and mysteries of everyday words and phrases. In this hardcover book, Dr. Lederer illuminates the history and mystery of everyday words and expressions, organizing these etymologies into 13 thematic clusters, including body parts; wild kingdom; entertainment; land, sea, air, and beyond; politics; sports; science; and religion.
A treasure chest of amazing facts, curiosities, and quizzes about your favorite authors and their works. Looking back to the Bible, classical mythology, and William Shakespeare and moving up to a library of contemporary writers, Richard Lederer’s Ultimate Book of Literary Trivia promises bright days of entertainment and enlightenment for the passionate book lover.
What fictional detective survived an attempted murder by his creator?
Whose gravestone bears the inscription “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”?
Who was the single mother, living on state benefits, whose series of fantastic novels made her the richest writer in England?
Dr. Lederer has written more than 60 books about language, history, and humor.
In Amazing Words, Word Wizard Richard Lederer offers his insight into the most bedazzling, beguiling, and bewitching words in the English language. With enchanting, enthralling, and entrancing etymologies, puns, and letter patterns of more than a thousand everyday words, readers will delight in the love of words that Dr. Lederer has poured into each entry.
With fascinating etymologies and letter patterns for more than 1,000 everyday words, best-selling language writer Richard Lederer shines light on the most bedazzling, beguiling, and bewitching words in the English language.
Chock-full of transfixing word histories, magical letter play, and hilarious puns, Amazing Words is an essential book for word lovers and verbivores. Dr. Lederer is the author of more than 60 books about language, history, and humor.
Challenging Words is a sublime adventure in recreational linguistics that brings order to our English language. Be prepared for a wordy workout consisting of aerobics of the mind and push-ups of the brain.
This is not a book for everyone. But if you are heels-over-head nuts about language and have a passion for snatching significance from the mass data swirling around us, you will share in its pages some sublime adventures in re-creation-al linguistics.
In the process of rising to the various challenges in these pages, your axons, dendrites, ganglia, and synapses will get quite a workout as you engage in a series of push-ups of the mind and aerobics of the brain.
Throughout his word-happy, wordstruck, wordaholic career, Dr. Richard Lederer has epitomized “learning dressed up to have fun.” His mission is to impose order on chaos and sprinkle fairy dust on the mundane. Enter this great banquet hall of words, and you will savor the abundant harvest of our bountiful, multifoliate English language.
Just about everybody has a name. In The Joy of Names, his master guide to names, best-selling language author Richard Lederer illuminates all you need to know about first names, baby names, last names, nicknames, cruel and unusual names, movie stars’ names, presidents’ names, eponymous names, names from myths, authors’ pseudonyms, and other fascinating facts about names.
Richard Lederer, known as “Learning Dressed Up to Have Fun,” makes these topics delightfully accessible. The illustrations by Todd Smith help bring the information to vibrant life.
After a multi-decade career of stimulating readers to appreciate and laugh at the glories and oddities of our English language, beloved language maven Richard Lederer has collected his very best and most popular pieces in Word Wizard. In this anthology, the reader will find essays that enlighten, inspire, and tickle the funny bone.
From his hilarious bloopers to his hymns of praise to the English language, these essays are the brightest gems of a storied career. Word Wizard includes a new introduction, prefaces for each essay, sprightly verse, and material never before published in Leader’s language books. With classic chapters such as “The World According to Student Bloopers,” “English Is a Crazy Language,” and “The Case for Short Words,” and shiny new essays such as “The Way We Word” and “Add Wealth to Your Vocabulary,” Word Wizard is sure to delight language lovers and Lederer fans everywhere.
In this wide-ranging collection, Richard Lederer offers his reflections on the English language, along with his tales of a life in letters. The more than 30 chapters include Dr. Lederer’s best columns from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Best-selling language writer Richard Lederer offers readers more of the irrepressible word play his fans can’t get enough of, along with his observations on a life in letters. From teaching English to Russian fifth graders to a zany dinner for punsters and from etymology to slang to dialect to fadspeak, these essays are learning and language dressed up to have fun, as only Dr. Lederer does it. He is the author of more than 60 books about language, history, and humor.
Crazy English is the ultimate joy ride through the English language, a beguiling harmony of laughter and learning.
In what other language, asks Lederer, do people drive on a parkway and park in a driveway, and your nose can run and your feet can smell? Lederer frolics through the logic-boggling byways of our language, discovering the names for phobias you didn’t know you could have, the longest words in our dictionaries, and the shortest sentence containing every letter in the alphabet. You’ll take a bird’s-eye view of our beastly language, feast on a banquet of mushrooming food metaphors, and meet the self-reflecting Doctor Rotcod, destined to speak only in palindromes.
Dr. Lederer has written more than 60 books about language, history, and humor.
The Play of Words features educational word games about the origins of words and common expressions. Great fun for the student at school and the family at home. A great way to learn and to have fun with the mother tongue. Perfect for language lovers.
Learn the origins of popular phrases in the English language through this exciting book of games perfect for language lovers.
Do you know the connection between the expression “a harrowing experience” and agriculture, between “by and large” and sailing, between “get your goat” and horses, or between “steal your thunder” and show business?
You probably have heard the comparisons “happy as a clam,” “smart as a whip,” “pleased as punch,” and “dead as a doornail” — but have you ever wondered why a clam should be happy, a whip smart, punch pleased, and a doornail dead?
Through the fifty games included in The Play of Words you’ll discover the answers to these questions as well as hundreds of other semantic delights, such as the rhyming game Inky Pinky, that repose in our marvelous English language.
A joyous hymn of praise to the English language, including its history and the writers, from Shakespeare to Orwell, who shaped it. Richard Lederer’s most luminous work.
Master verbalist Richard Lederer, America’s “Wizard of Idiom” (Denver Post), presents a love letter to the most glorious of human achievements.
Welcome to Richard Lederer’s beguiling celebration of language — of our ability to utter, write, and receive words. No purists need stop here. Dr. Lederer is no linguistic sheriff organizing posses to hunt down and string up language offenders. Instead, join him “In Praise of English,” and discover why the tongue described in Shakespeare’s day as “of small reatch” has become the most widely spoken language in history:
He also points out the pitfalls and pratfalls of English. If a man mans a station, what does a woman do? In the “The Department of Redundancy Department,” “Is English Prejudiced?” and other essays, Richard Lederer urges us not to abandon that which makes us human: the capacity to distinguish, discriminate, compare, and evaluate.
Conceived by Richard Lederer and built by award-winning constructor Gayle Dean, each of the 100 puzzles in The Big Book of Word Play Crosswords is a rousing collection of 100 original puzzle.100 crossword puzzles in this book combines the classical elegance of American crosswords with the cleverness of British versions.
Sparked by amusing, witty, and challenging themes, these brain teasers feature jokes, puns, bloopers, rhymes, anagrams, and palindromes. Each of the 100 crossword puzzles includes an introduction by verbivore Richard Lederer, author of more than 60 books about language, history, and humor.
Welcome to the website woven for wordaholics, logolepts, and verbivores. Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. If you are heels over head (as well as head over heels) in love with words, tarry here a while to graze or, perhaps, feast on the English language. Ours is the only language in which you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway and your nose can run and your feet can smell.